California Women Receiving Millions To Settle Bias Case

By KATHERINE BISHOP, Special to the New York Times

Published: January 20, 1988

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 19—
In a multimillion dollar settlement, the State Farm Insurance Company has agreed to pay damages and back pay to women who were refused jobs as insurance sales agents in California over a 13-year period.

Two women and the estate of another who brought suit in Federal District Court in 1979 will each recieve $420,822. The women worked as office managers for State Farm, a job that paid about $20,000 a year at the time, and were repeatedly rejected for sales jobs, which they said paid about $75,000 a year.

The women said they had been told a college degree was a requirement for sales agents even though men were hired without degrees. One woman, Wilda Tipton of Ventura, said she had also been told that agents might be required to work at night and that the company could not guarantee the safety of female agents.

''I never wanted them to be able to do this to women ever again,'' said another plaintiff, Muriel E. Kraszewski of Long Beach, explaining why she brought the suit.

The company will pay a total of $100 million to $300 million to a pool that could include thousands of women, according to Guy T. Saperstein, an Oakland lawyer who filed the suit. He said the settlement could be the largest ever in a case brought under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids discrimination on the basis of sex.

The figures were disputed by Kirby Wilcox, a San Francisco attorney representing State Farm, who said the damages would total far less than $100 million. He said the company did not admit that it had discriminated but was trying to end litigation and ''leave the past in the past.''

The State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, based in Bloomington, Ill., had a net income in 1986 of $1.6 billion.

The case covers 1,113 sales jobs that became open and were filled by men from July 1974 to the end of 1987.

After a four-month trial, Federal District Judge Thelton E. Henderson ruled in April 1985 that State Farm had discriminated against women in recruiting and hiring sales agents.

Under the settlement, a woman who wants to make a claim may file for damages in a four-month period beginning May 1. Hearings by a special master appointed by the court will begin in January 1990. Those found to be victims of discrimination will be awarded up to the maximum of more than $400,000 received by the three who brought the suit. One original plaintiff, Daisy Jackson of Palo Alto, died in 1983.

The amount awarded in each case depends on the length of time that has passed since the claimant was first denied a job. #85,000 on List The plaintiffs said they did not know how many women might collect damages, but Mr. Saperstein said he had a list of 85,000 women who had worked for the company or had applied for the sales jobs.

Judge Henderson approved the terms of the settlement this afternoon. He still has to decide what the legal fees will be.

Claudia Withers of the Women's Legal Defense Fund in Washington, which specializes in sex-discrimination litigation, said the group's records indicated that the largest settlement of a bias claim against a private employer until now was $10 million that Libby-Owens Ford agreed to pay last year.

Because of the decentralized nature of the insurance industry, the suit against State Farm, while brought in Federal court, only concerns hiring practices in California.

In 1975, when the women brought their complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, less than 1 percent of the people hired for sales positions in State Farm's California offices were women. Mr. Wilcox said that around the nation the portion of women now hired as sales agents is comparable to the portion of women in the work force.

As part of the settlement announced today, State Farm will hire women to fill 50 percent of the sales vacancies in California in the next ten years.

Mr. Saperstein's firm established a toll-free number for women wishing to inquire about the claim procedure: (800) 822-5000.